The Death of God-Language?

The way I see it, there is a major problem with theology today, and it is this: it is not theology. As is obvious, theology means instruction about God. I think it would be reasonable to assume that if I picked up a book on theology, I would find lots of God-language and, at least in a Christian context, I wouldn’t have to look too hard to find reference to Jesus Christ. But it turns out I am insane. A wide swath of theology today has divorced itself from God and rattles down the road of history without Him, like a car without an engine. And just like an engineless car, this theology will only roll downhill. God is the focus and the drive of theological study. Without Him in the mix, we are simply talking. I cannot understand how theology can be theology when the word and the propositional content are separated. But perhaps I’m old-fashioned.

Let me tell you my context: I am a white, male, middle-class American college student. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church but am now Reformed Baptist. Some of my assumptions and commitments are that the Bible is absolutely authoritative and that it is divinely inspired. As such, I cannot speak to or about the experiences of many, many Christians. But my context does not dictate silence. I too have a voice, and though people like me have been speaking for centuries, it does not mean that I cannot speak now, and it does not mean that they were wrong then. In this paper, I want to argue that theology is only itself when it speaks of its subject, that is, God. I want to argue that the Bible has Something to say, and that the Gospel has been discarded in favor of the doctrines of humans. This position is controversial because it is traditional. It is unorthodox precisely because it defends orthodoxy. This paper is the refuse of secularism, dropped into the bag of common sense and set aflame on the doorstep of modern man. This is, in the colloquial parlance, the ding-dong-ditch of the death of God.

We have to pause for a moment, lingering on the brink of this earth-shattering epistle. Isn’t one of the primary assertions of contemporary theology (as set out in the handouts on secularism, assertions of contemporary theology, and the rise of modernism) that a conception of Christianity limited to the authority of the Bible and founded in an orthodox conception of Jesus as the historical God-Man and Savior a result of the exclusion of other voices from the discussion? Should we not listen to other, and (reportedly) equally valid, interpretations of the central meaning of the Message? Yes and no. In my erudite opinion, anyone who proposes a view of Christianity which rejects the Bible as the standard of knowledge and God’s message to the world, as well as replacing the historical and actual death of Jesus with myth-language or some sort of “higher” interpretation of what seems to me to be a common-sense reading of the text as a historical account, must examine their motives. Are they truly trying to reveal to people what they think the true message of Christianity has been all along? Or are they hijacking traditional language to mask the replacement of orthodox systems with their own ideologies in order to make it easier for the Church to swallow? I think this is what Tillich does, and I think it is ultimately dishonest. When a normal (and by normal here I mean not an academic) person on the street talks about God, they are not talking about the impersonal ground of being. Let’s not turn theology into a country club and have high and educated discussions in our ivory towers full of code words and secret meanings that the rest of the populace is oblivious to. Many contemporary theologians argue this, but does their message reflect it? If what you mean by “God” or “Gospel” is not what your audience means, are you truly communicating?

The sort of linguistic camouflage that Tillich or Hick presents is ultimately the enslavement of the universal to the particular. Culture and prevailing human thought forms, the absolute rulers of our minds, have dictated that we must reject the supernatural in favor of scientism and place absolute truth (and its supporters) in the furnace; in that place there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. And so Christianity, which does not anymore realize that it is a Message from Above rather than a human construction, blindly follows the spirit of the age which is itself the age of blindness to truth, and both fall into the pit. This spirit says that there is no universal truth, no claim to knowledge which applies to all peoples in all situations. And it is right, if it limits itself to speaking of humanity. But humanity, that limited, ignorant, pain-filled mass, is exactly where the Gospel did not come from. The Gospel is the message to the world, not the message from it. God reached down from the heavens and men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And He spoke universally. It is ridiculous to say that the universal message of salvation and life does not apply to some situation. All you have succeeded in saying is that you don’t understand the concept “universal.” If the Bible is universal, it speaks to you. It applies to you. Take it and use it. Your context can dictate superadded meanings to the text, but do not mistake them for the primary ones.

What about liberation theologians like Gutierrez who claim that poor and oppressed people are not concerned with abstract metaphysical claims, but rather practical and particular changes to oppressive and evil worldly systems? Well, in a certain sense I understand that pure theology is perhaps not the most pressing need of the downcast. But in another sense the Gospel of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is of utmost importance. Let’s assume that the orthodox Christian conception of the world is correct, and that after this life there are two eternal destinations contingent upon a person’s response to the work of Jesus, namely, heaven and hell. Now, if one assumes that an eternity of happiness and fulfillment are available upon acceptance of Jesus, then that eternal reward infinitely outweighs any improvement to the conditions of this life. Does this mean that Christians should ignore social reform? By no means! I like Gutierrez and I think he makes an important point, but I think he takes it too far. What I mean is that if we focus only on preaching a message of liberation from social or worldly oppression we are denying the oppressed a much greater good—liberation from sin and the wrath of God.

While most contemporary theologians argue that the legitimacy of established Christian doctrine is less than solid (in part) because entire swaths of people were left out of its formulation, I want to argue a more practical point. I want to assert that the ecumenism of orthodox Christian creeds and doctrines are at this point irrelevant on the ground level. Key terms and ideas have been established in lay consciousness for hundreds to thousands of years, and a radical reevaluation of these concepts and a reassignment of their referents seems to me to be simply impractical. Words like ‘God’ and ‘salvation,’ the role of Jesus in the doctrine of the Christian church, these things are already defined in the public lexicon, and use of the same words with totally new referents, many of which (such as Tillich’s or Robinson’s conception of God) stand in stark contrast or outright opposition to the traditional and pre-established concepts behind those words. This strikes me as somewhat disingenuous. It is as if theologians want to capture the allegiance of unwitting laypersons with comfortable language while at the same time undertaking a secret revolution and rejection of everything those laypersons hold ‘Christianity’ to be.

So what then are we to say to theologians like Kwok Pui-lan and other syncretistic or inclusivisic writers, or to “Christian” pluralists like John Hick, or to proponents of liberation theology like Gustavo Gutierrez? Is there no place for them in the discussion? Once again, yes and no. I suggest that this more modern or liberal approach to Christianity, characterized by the reassignment of traditional language, should be given its own vocabulary. New ideas should have new ways of speaking. Old and firmly established ideas should retain the old words. Christian theology should retain traditional God-language as being about the personal, transcendent, God of the Bible as interpreted for thousands of years. New conceptions of God should be easily identifiable and fall under their own umbrella. Those who attempt theology without God should no longer claim to be continuing the course of orthodox thought, but rather depart from it to make their own world with their own history. Let the people decide which they prefer, rather than attempting to sway them with the shell of familiarity masking an alien worldview. I am not here arguing with scholars like Susan Thistlethwaite who challenge the inclusivity or appropriateness of God-language in terms of gender, etc. I am arguing with people like Hick, who call themselves Christian and depart from virtually every standard of definition for what Christianity means.

Theology without God is impossible. We have fooled ourselves into accepting it only because God-language has fallen prey to a linguistic Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, or to some other equally appropriate pop culture reference. The point is, the only reason we think it even exists is because it looks the same on the outside. But it isn’t. This is something new; this is idolatry. We worship ourselves or we worship the universe or we worship life or love or being or any of a million other things, anything to avoid worshiping the God we once knew. We have said that the traditional idea of God is irrelevant to modern society… have we ever considered that the dictates of modern society are irrelevant to God?

The point is that the idea of a transcendent and active God is only irrelevant because we have abandoned it. In our rush to seek fulfillment in individualism and self-actualization, we have made man the measure of all things, and thrown out the Ruler. And then the theologians come and say that theology must speak to the culture, and so theology must discard God. But what if theologians concerned themselves, not with “limping after reality” but with proclaiming the Reality of God? Let culture drift in the sea of relativism, and let true theology be the port that the ship of faith returns longingly to, tired of the restless waves and storms of changing cultural norms and social pressures. Theology will endure not by being water, but by being stone. Let us look to our Rock and shape our theology around Him, and not try to chisel Him small enough to fit into the box we want to give Him.

In this paper I want to sound the death knell of the death of God. Let us move beyond the declaration of God’s death at the hands of a mustachioed German iconoclast to the divine declaration of His death on a tree on the outskirts of a Middle Eastern city in 33 AD. Nietzsche said, “God is dead, and we killed him.” This was the cry of the Gospel writers, and then the triumphant Yes of “He is risen!” Let us not forget it.

How Could We Not Sin in Heaven?

I've often wondered how God will bring it about that we will not sin in heaven. If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? I think I've hit upon a partial solution, or perhaps a complete one. But first it is important to note that there is a distinction to make. In heaven, it will not simply be the case that we will not sin, but that we will be unable to sin. Does this crucial point mean that our choices will be somehow restricted, or even taken away altogether? How can we be free and obey God without the possibility of disobedience?

I would like to begin by making an analogy that will perhaps explain a bit of the situation. Each person, though all totally corrupted by sin (Romans 3), has differing desires for sin. I, for example, have no desire to indulge in drunkenness, though for others it is a serious temptation, and all have their own weaknesses. It could be the case that just as I have no desire to become drunk on my own, and that if anyone offered me the opportunity, I would reject it, in heaven this would be the case for all sins. Our inclinations would be such that if offered the chance to sin, we would freely reject it. But we can go even further. Only the righteous/saved will dwell with God in heaven (Revelation 21). Just as I will not only not choose drunkenness if it is offered to me, but will also not offer the choice to another (because of my own inclinations), no one in heaven will offer temptation to anyone else, because no one will be inclined at all toward any sin. So not only would we freely choose every time not to sin on our own, but the choice or temptation will never even be offered because no one will have sinful inclinations.

Does this capture the inability to sin, or is it simply a very strong form of the ability not to sin, which Christians (and only Christians) possess right now? I think that while the above may be helpful in imagining our state of mind in heaven, it does not quite capture our total inability to sin before God. Lenny Esposito points out (http://www.comereason.org/phil_qstn/phi039.asp) that God is unable to sin, though no one doubts He is totally free. Therefore it is indeed possible to be free and have an inability to sin. It could be that just as I (as a Christian not bound by my sin nature) am totally free (in the Sartrian sense of never being totally unfree), I do not have the ability to fly unaided. This does not essentially restrict my freedom (since we are not claiming a sort of radical freedom).

Granted, though, flying and making moral choices are not quite the same. For a complete understanding we must look to the Bible. 1 John 3:5-6, 9 state :

You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. … No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

It is our partaking in the nature of God that provides us with the inability to sin, because God cannot go against His own nature, namely, absolute holiness. Esposito writes:

Because we have two natures that are at odds with each other, there is an inner struggle that exists in every believer. Romans 7 is dedicated to showing this struggle. However, upon death, the old man will pass away leaving only the new, divine nature. One of the most important passages to understanding this is found in Romans 6:4-7:

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

The last verse is key - "he who has died is free from sin." When we're saved and choose to be baptized, we die to ourselves and receive a new nature. This nature is in conflict with our old fleshly nature. When our bodies die, that old nature perishes completely as well, leaving the divine nature alone.

Now we return to one of the big questions I raised at the beginning: If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? There is no easy answer to this question, and in the end we must trust God's wisdom. But Christian philosopher William Lane Craig writes that perhaps the only way heaven could exist would be as a result of our life on earth (http://www.origins.org/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html). He says:

Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility.

There is also the very old concept of the felix culpa, or the happy fault. This idea, briefly stated, is that God allowed the Fall in order to bring about a greater good through the Incarnation of Christ and the salvation of our souls. As Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologica,

But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Romans 5:20): "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound." Hence, too, in the blessing of the Paschal candle, we say: "O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!" (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4001.htm#3)

We see in the world that God allows some evil to occur in order to bring about a greater good, and so it can be inferred that if our relating to Christ in the way that we do now is the greatest and ultimate good, God might permit the entry of sin into the world in order to accomplish it.

Pietism and Early American Theology

The practice of Evangelicalism in the United States has become a touchstone of American culture and religious practice. But Evangelicalism did not emerge from a vacuum. As with any religious movement, it arose in response to many factors, including but not limited to previous religious systems of thought, cultural needs, and political positioning. While this essay cannot chart the complete course of Evangelical development in the United States, it can attempt to outline the possible influence of continental Pietism in shaping the theology of America’s early colonial evangelical leaders, such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Similarities between the two movements cannot be denied, and will be briefly pointed out: particularly an emphasis on a changed life; the need for qualified, confessing ministers; contributions to mission work; and a revitalization of religious concern among ordinary men and women. Though it seems that many colonial Evangelicals (particularly Lutherans) were originally strongly opposed to Pietism, the passage of time and the situation in the Colonies softened this resistance and resulted in a significant mingling between the two groups (Tappert, passim). An examination of the thought of Jonathan Edwards, the most significant early American theologian, will perhaps yield insight into growing similarities in emphasis between Evangelicals and Pietists.

F. Ernest Stoeffler writes about Pietism, “Wherever it is found its ethos is manifested in a religious self-understanding which the author has characterized elsewhere as experiential, biblical, perfectionistic, and oppositive” (Stoeffler 9). Pietism can generally be described as a movement which stressed the importance of ethical, upright behavior by the Christian, in order to distinguish the saved person from the unsaved world. Philipp Jakob Spener is widely considered to be the one of the most important figures in early Pietism (Mullin168). He outlined in his most famous work, the Pia Desideria, his “proposals to correct conditions in the Church.” A short glance at the table of contents gives us the following suggestions: more extensive use of the Scriptures, exercise of the spiritual priesthood of all believers, emphasis on practice versus mere knowledge of Christianity, a change in the conduct of religious controversies, the reform of schools and universities, and preaching for the purposes of edification (Spener vii). He writes:

We do not understand the perfection which we demand of the church in such a way that not a single hypocrite is any longer to be found in it, for we know that there is no field of grain in which there are no weeds. What we mean is that the church should be free of manifest offenses, that nobody who is afflicted with such failings should be allowed to remain in the church without fitting reproof and ultimately exclusion, and that the true members of the church should be richly filled with many fruits of their faith. Thus the weeds will no longer cover the grain and make it unsightly, as is unfortunately often the case now, but the weeds will be covered by the grain and made inconspicuous (Spener 81).

A concern for proper Christian conduct was therefore motivated by a desire to present the Church as both appealing and effective in the presentation of the Gospel to the secular world. We can see in this a similarity to the emphasis placed upon godly living in modern Evangelical churches. Evangelical alternatives to worldly activities and entertainment such as music or movies, as well as the growing movement among conservative Evangelicals to home-school their children, all point to a desire to be distinct from the world in the same way that early Pietists advocated, and often for the same motivation.

In regard to the selection of ministers, Spener and the Pietists believed that only those who are called to ministry should be allowed to fill positions in the church. Spener wrote:
Since ministers must bear the greatest burden in all these things which pertain to a reform of the church, and since their shortcomings do correspondingly great harm, it is of the utmost importance that the office of the ministry be occupied by men who, above all, are themselves true Christians and, then, have the divine wisdom to guide others carefully on the way of the Lord. It is therefore important, indeed necessary, for the reform of the church that only such persons be called who may be suited, and that nothing at all except the glory of God be kept in view during the whole procedure of calling. This would mean that all carnal schemes involving favor, friendship, gifts, and similarly unseemly things would be set aside (Spener 103).
In a letter to Moses Lyman responding to the news that Lyman had taken it upon himself to preach to a congregation as a layman, Jonathan Edwards revealed his position, much like that of the Pietists, that the ministry is a calling and not a simple profession. Edwards reproved Lyman, writing:

And if there be no certain limits or bounds, but everyone that inclines may have liberty, alas! what should we soon come to? If God had not seen it necessary that such things [the ministry] should have certain limits and bounds, he never would have appointed a certain particular order of men to that work and office, to be set apart to it, in so solemn a manner, in the name of God (Edwards 302).

Most significant about this letter is Edwards’ approving mention of Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian Pietist then ministering in New Jersey (Edwards 303, footnote 9). Edwards notes that Tennent and he were of the same position in this matter. But more than this, the mention shows that Edwards was familiar with Pietist thought.

Randall Balmer writes that, “The most profound influence of Pietism is, once again, incalculable—its effect upon ordinary believers. For anyone reared within the evangelical subculture in America, with its parietal rules, its emphasis on personal piety, its proscriptions against alcohol, tobacco, and dancing, and its sabbatarian scruples, the continued influence of Pietism is self-evident” (Balmer 27). Pietism began as a movement to revitalize Protestant faith, and succeeded to a large extent. Spener’s emphasis on personal Bible study and devotionals (McGrath 146) as a method for growing in faith and applying Christianity to daily life would not make waves in any Evangelical church today. Edwards, of course, as a leader of the first Great Awakening, also greatly emphasized a personal, intimate relationship with God rather than an abstract intellectual knowledge.

It is a well-known fact that Evangelicals exert a great deal of effort and expense in their support of and participation in worldwide and localized missionary activities. While Evangelical Protestants did not begin to focus on missions in earnest until the Nineteenth Century, Moravian Pietists from Germany had established small missionary communities in Greenland, America, and Africa by 1750 (McGrath 178). As McGrath writes, “Pietistic and Evangelical forms of Protestantism, which emphasized personal conversion, were naturally oriented toward the idea of reaching out to those who were not converted. . . [they] saw this work as the natural extension of their calling as Christians” (McGrath 178). Jonathan Edwards also participated in missionary activity, working with communities of American Indians, especially Mohican and Mohawk groups (Smith xxiii).

Scholars such as Randall Balmer and F. Ernest Stoeffler have argued for the significance of Pietist influence on American Evangelicalism, and the views of both groups on four large issues have been shown to have been, if not identical, at least quite similar. Philipp Jakob Spener, the “father of Pietism,” and Jonathan Edwards, figurehead of the Evangelical Great Awakening, wrote and worked approximately fifty years apart—Spener in Germany and Edwards in the upper American Colonies. We know from correspondences that Edwards was familiar with Pietist thought to a certain extent, and that he approved of the work being done by Pietist ministers such as Gilbert Tennent and Theodore Frelinghuysen (Edwards). Whether Edwards ever read Pia Desideria is not known, much less how much explicit influence Pietism had on the development of Edwards’ theology. It could well be that Evangelicals and Pietists are similar because of an underlying commitment to Biblical values and principles, which worked themselves out in similar ways independently of one another. However, Tappert demonstrates that as time progressed and ministry positions became vacant, colonial Americans grew more and more accepting of small doctrinal differences. George Whitefield was even warmly welcomed to preach in Lutheran Pietist churches (Tappert 27). It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that Edwards and contemporary Pietists would hold substantial common ground.
Balmer argues that Evangelicalism in the United States emerged from a blending of two streams of Protestant thought: Puritanism and Pietism (Balmer 14). While it seems as if every American knows of their Puritan religious heritage, one seldom hears much about the debt American religious thought owes to Pietism. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a non-specialist that has even heard of the Pietist movement. But it would seem as if, as much as the famous Jonathan Edwards, Philipp Jakob Spener had a hand in forming modern American Evangelical doctrine—a doctrine that seeks to uphold orthodoxy while boldly calling Christians to live out their faith in a real and effective way.


Works Cited

Balmer, Randall. Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. 13-30. Print.

Edwards, Jonathan. The Great Awakening. The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4. Ed. C. C. Goen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

Edwards, Jonathan. "Letter to Moses Lyman, May 10, 1742." A Jonathan Edwards Reader. Ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Print.

McGrath, Alister. Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution--A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First. New York: HarperOne, 2007. Print.

Mullin, Robert Bruce. A Short World History of Christianity. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. Print.

Smith, Stout, and Minkelma, "Editor's Introduction." A Jonathan Edwards Reader. Ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Print.

Spener, Philipp Jakob. Pia Desideria. Fifth Printing. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. Print.

Stoeffler, F. Ernest. "Introduction." Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity. Ed. F. Ernest Stoeffler. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1976. Print.

Tappert, Theodore. "The Influence of Pietism in Colonial American Lutheranism." Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity. Ed. F. Ernest Stoeffler. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1976. Print.

Why Would an All-Powerful God Care About Me?

It has often been contended that it is rather arrogant of us to assume that God, the Creator of the universe, should be interested at all in the life or problems of an insignificant mote in the eye of existence such as a single human being, or even humanity as a whole. However, it can easily be shown that this concern is unfounded and even contains within it the seed of its own demise.

An all-powerful God, which He must be if He exists (otherwise He is no God, but simply a very powerful being), should also be One of infinite intelligence and infinite powers of observation. He could comprehend at once the arrangement of every particle in the universe, and still have infinite mental power left over with which to perform any and all mental processes, separately or even all at once.

If such is the case, it is completely understandable that God should be intimately concerned with the 44,675,883rd grain of sand in the Sahara Desert, much less a rational being such as a human. This becomes even more the case when we remember that we are the only beings we know of with such powers of rational thought. God could of course concern Himself with humans, as it would be no exertion on His part whatsoever. Why should He not care about us?

How Can I Know Souls Exist?

A poll was taken in class today as to whether we believed in something in us that is not simply our bodies (a soul, or something similar). A large number of people raised their hands to indicate that they didn't believe they had an immaterial soul. The question of how one can know if one has a soul or not was, I thought, a good one to write about.

The gospel is coming up against some rather unusual attacks in recent decades. One finds, more and more, that people do not believe themselves to be sinners, and that if they do, they don't admit it. It is a serious problem for the presentation of the gospel as a means of life if people don't believe they're dead. But another criticism of what was once presupposed to be self-evident is physicalism.

Physicalism simply means that the physical is all there is, and that all there is can be explained in terms of physical means. The consequence of this is elimination of souls (sometimes minds) and the supernatural in general. How can a Christian defend against this?

I think the first thing to do is to present the physicalist with some examples of things which are self-evidently true without physical instantiation, or things which must be true in all possible worlds. For example, the fundamental laws of logic are not only true in this world, but must be true in any possible world. They require no physical evidence for us to see their truth, and do not depend in any way on the physical world for their truth. Once you admit that something cannot exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense, you will have established that there are things which exist independent of the physical universe (and if you take the case of mathematical propositions, an infinite number of things, at that).

So we are agreed that the soul is immaterial, and that immaterial things exist. But what exactly is a soul, and how do we know that that particular immaterial thing exists? I would define the soul as the (immaterial) seat of reason, intelligence, and personality. Some would argue that all of these can be explained physically, but Lewis shows in his argument from reason that rationality cannot be purely explained by physical causes without removing the basis for rationality itself. I do not have the space here to make a full account of his argument, but it can be found throughout his book Miracles.

I am not saying that there is no physical element in the explanation of these properties, only that it is not the full explanation. If we can even only establish that reason or our capability to comprehend truth cannot (and never can be) fully explained in terms of physical causes we have a large hole in our view of self, something which the Christian faith (and others) offer to fill.

Christianity gives us a theory regarding that gap in our selfhood, and at that point the question becomes probabilistic to a certain extent. If there are no other satisfying explanations, and Christianity (or any other religion) offers an account which provides one, we must weigh which of these accounts seems most likely, and we will be epistemically justified in believing that account.